Amber's words rang in my ears long after we turned the lights off that night. They crawled over my skin like ants, festering like cuts that wouldn't close.

She was right, but was she? Was it such a bad thing that I knew what happened to her? Survivor was a part of her past as much as it was a part of mine. Of course we were survivors of very different things, but that didn't mean we couldn't help each other, even if it was just through understanding on what uneven ground the other stood. But how could you convey that there's power in numbers to someone who wanted to walk the knife's edge alone?

I fell back into my library routine with Tyler now that finals were approaching in earnest. The night before Reading Day, a buffer between the last day of class and the first day of finals that was supposed to be used for studying but was more often used for sledding on cafeteria trays if it was snowing and getting drunk in a dorm room if it was not, Tyler brought up his own plans for that night.

"We're having a tournament tonight if you're interested in coming?" he said, flipping through the dusty pages of a massive book he had found in the recesses of the upper levels.

He was the only student I knew who actually used the archaic Dewy Decimal system rather than pulling quotes from the abstract of an article he had searched on Google scholar. Around us was a flurry of quiet activity, the tell-tale sounds of students bent under the heavy weight of deadlines they had thought were ages away. The smell of strong coffee kept washing over us with the near constant opening and closing of the library doors as they swallowed students whole and spit them, eye-sore and stiff-fingered, back out again.

"You sure you want to do that?" I asked with a hint of a smile. "My NHL skills are pretty impressive."

"Funny, I don't remember seeing you around the rinks growing up."

"That's because I was too good for the likes of you." I stretched my arms above my head and leaned back in my chair. Feeling rushed back into my joints, cramped from sitting in the same position for the last three hours.

"I'll have you know I was 3rd in the state in high school," he bragged, crossing his arms over his chest. Seeing his mouth crook up at the right corner, it felt connected to me, like the lifting of his lips lifted the weight off my shoulders.

"Then you shouldn't be afraid of a little friendly competition."

"You're on."

_______________________________

"Dude, c'mon! You're losing your man-card here!" cried Zeke, Tyler's roommate, as my virtual hockey player beat the crap out of Tyler's.

Tyler didn't say anything, his brow furrowed, hunched over the controller. His fingers flew across the buttons, but it was to no avail. His meter ran out and the ref pronounced me the winner.

"Sweating yet?" I asked, as Tyler's player was sent to the penalty box and we prepared for another face-off. There were four minutes left in the third quarter. I was up by two.

He nudged me with his shoulder. "It's never too late to make a comeback."

"No chance, man. She has skills," said Zeke, shaking his head forlornly. He seemed to be taking Tyler's ensuing loss as a personal disappointment. Sensing defeat, he reached from his sprawled position on the leather armchair to grab his fourth slice of pepperoni pizza.

The coffee table was littered with an assortment of beer bottles and caps, dipping sauces for the pizza and breadsticks we had ordered in, and a fine dusting of pulverized Doritos from people blindly rummaging in the bowl while trying to focus on the game. The sounds of music and beer pong drifted from the kitchen down the hall where people had gone after having their turn on the Xbox. A piece of cardboard and a sharpie duct-taped to the wall served as a bracket for those who had already played and moved on to the next rounds. Tyler and I were playing in the semi-finals.

"Fine, let's make a bet," said Tyler. "She wins I buy house beer for the rest of the year. I win, and you have to jump in Mohawk Pond, naked."

"You're on!" Zeke fixed me with a menacing glare, which was slightly less effective than it might have been with his bulging mouth of pizza. "Don't lose," he ordered.

"You know, I might just to see you go skinny dipping."

Mohawk Pond was a small pond on the south side of campus. It had a fountain set into the middle to distract people from the neon green algae that usually coated its surface, but more often than not the algae was too thick for the fountain to do much good. It was rumored that the fish that lived in there walked onto land at night and if you jumped in you would grow an extra arm.

The next few minutes were competitively charged, the sounds of the video game amplified through surround sound speakers. Tyler and I traded insults back and forth, punctuated by Zeke's chants of encouragement or groans of disappointment. Tyler scored again. I took the puck back, my player gliding across the ice, passing it off to another only to have his goalie make an impressive snag. I was still up by one, if I could just hold him off for another minute—the buzzer sounded.

"Victory!" I crowed, tossing the controller down.

"YES!" yelled Zeke, jumping to his feet and completely upending the chip bowl he had settled in his lap. Shards of Doritos pelted us in a fluorescent hail, clattering to the wood floor.

"I'll just throw you in the pond myself," said Tyler, not seeming too heart-broken over the loss. "Good game," he said, kissing my cheek. I blushed, but Zeke wasn't paying attention.

"Another?" I asked.

"No, I don't want to give him another opportunity," said Zeke.  "Put on a real game instead."

While Tyler was flipping through the channels to find some other sporting event for us to watch, Zeke's girlfriend, Crystal, walked in from the other room. There was a red solo cup in her hand and a pout on her matching red lips as she tumbled into Zeke's lap. She had chosen to wear a super-short black skirt that was now riding up and low cut red top to a party strictly deemed a video-game tournament, but she was nice enough. Her voice, however, was an entirely different matter.

"Come hang out with me," she whined, pawing at his shirt. I just barely managed to keep from rolling my eyes. I felt Tyler stiffen beside me at the high-pitched cadence of her words; he had none too subtly told me of his feelings about her when she first arrived, already drunk, at the house.

"In a minute, we're watching the game," said Zeke, focusing on the hockey game Tyler had picked. It was amusing how little even Zeke seemed to enjoy her presence. He patted her back as if that would appease her.

"Babe, c'mon I need a partner for pong. Pleaseeee," she wheedled. She clasped his chin with drunk, clumsy fingers and tried to direct his attention towards her.

I thought about all the things I would rather hear than her voice. Screws in a blender, Amber yelling at me, death metal at peak volume, a form of Chinese water torture.

"She must be great in bed," I muttered only loud enough for Tyler to hear as Zeke let her lead him away with a sigh.

Tyler laughed out loud as though it was the last thing he expected me to say.

"What?" I asked.

"You're nothing like I thought you'd be," he said, taking my hand. His thumb traced circles on my skin and I was struck by the idea of what it would be like if everyone who touched you, good or bad, left a visible mark behind. Like a freckle from the sun, until there were so many, you could read them on people's skin and trace stories in their constellations.

What if Tyler's thumb, still repeating its circular motion, left black spirals behind, circles interconnected where our lives had overlapped by happenstance? What if what Amber had said about seeing her attacker's handprints became reality? What kind of marks or shapes would Danny have left behind? Chris? My parents? A lifetime of marks would eventually cover you, bleeding into one another until you were unrecognizable from the clean person you started out as. But that was the point, wasn't it? If you arrived at your grave, clean and untouched, had you even really lived?

"You're a little askew of expectations yourself," I said.

I wondered if he was thinking about that day in philosophy like I was.

"In a good way, I hope," he said.

"Mostly," I returned with a grin. "Do you miss it?" I asked, nodding to the TV where one player had just slammed another into the boards.

Tyler shrugged. "Sometimes. I'll still play pick-up once in a while, but I've accepted that that part of my life is over."

"I always wanted to be a figure skater when I was little," I said absently, tracking the players' progress across the ice as though they had been born with skates attached to their feet. "It was too expensive for all the private lessons."

"Yeah, hockey is about the same, but I loved it."

Was it just me, or did his voice still hinge slightly on the past tense?

"It's a bit like flying, you know? I always loved that about it. But I haven't been in forever."

Suddenly, Tyler was up and pulling me to my feet.

"What are you doing?"  I asked laughing, sliding a bit on the wooden floor in my wool socks.

A huge smile split his face, bringing out the dimple in his right cheek. "C'mon, I have something to show you."

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Hi everyone! Sorry for the gap between updates, but here it is! I wanted a lot more to happen in this chapter but it would've been way too long. Alas, it'll have to wait until the next update. I'd love to know what you guys think. Tyler seems full of surprises, doesn't he? :)

Don't forget to comment, vote, and share if you liked what you read! As always thank you from the bottom of my heart for continuing to give Dash and her story part of your day :)